Ninjutsu, lackluster?

-20 seconds cooldown
-Can fail because of ping or accidental double-tap a Mudra
-Very low potency

I'm not that advanced into NIN, just got to 50 and been playing it as 60 in PotD but.
So far the most I do with my Ninjutsu is cast Huton then keep it up with Armor Break, and Suiton for mid-fight Trick Attack. Doton in AoE situations but mobs usually end up away from the AoE.

I don't find a reason for:
-Fuma Shuriken: 280 potency attack. Why even use it when I can use
-Raiton: 400 potency? They both trigger the same cooldown.
-Hyoton: 140 potency. What's even the point of this right here?
-Katon: 250 potency AoE. Isn't it better to use Doton?

All in all, I feel like they're all too weak for the cooldown they have, and that being able to use only ONE every 20 seconds makes it so I never use Fuma/Hyoton because Raiton is the exact same but better, or I'll never use Katon because Doton just does it better.

Are Ninjutsu really this bad or am I missing something really important?

Fuma Used to be good but now is just outshined by Raton, but its still used as part of TCJ
Hyoton Upgrades later into a skill to use under Kassatsu
Katon is better if stuff is about to die/move out of doton and also upgrades later

It's because you're really not dealing with the full kit of Ninjutsu. at that level
Fuma is mainly used in TCJ as your first jutsu since the potency increased. In the earlier days you would use it more often since going into Raiton would be clipping a GCD.

Raiton is still used frequently so it's not outshined.

Hyoton is pretty pointless which is why at 76 they upgraded when used under Kassatsu and it's the most damaging jutsu out of the toolkit.

Katon offers the base potency, but pending on how many mobs there are it would make more sense to doton. Don't know math off hand but the server ticks for damage would take over Katon's base damage pretty overtime. Though in most pulls you generally will have two jutsus good to go after using hide so you can just doton then katon. Katon does get upgraded at 76 which does shift the balance so it's something to look forward to.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Fuma Used to be good but now is just outshined by Raton, but its still used as part of TCJ
Hyoton Upgrades later into a skill to use under Kassatsu
Katon is better if stuff is about to die/move out of doton and also upgrades later

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Hmmmm, so we're just Rogues? All the Ninja skills are all long cooldowns or behind long cooldowns.
All I do is spam the Gust combo for 20 secs. It chains into nothing of Ninja.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

It's because you're really not dealing with the full kit of Ninjutsu. at that level
Fuma is mainly used in TCJ as your first jutsu since the potency increased. In the earlier days you would use it more often since going into Raiton would be clipping a GCD.

Raiton is still used frequently so it's not outshined.

Hyoton is pretty pointless which is why at 76 they upgraded when used under Kassatsu and it's the most damaging jutsu out of the toolkit.

Katon offers the base potency, but pending on how many mobs there are it would make more sense to doton. Don't know math off hand but the server ticks for damage would take over Katon's base damage pretty overtime. Though in most pulls you generally will have two jutsus good to go after using hide so you can just doton then katon. Katon does get upgraded at 76 which does shift the balance so it's something to look forward to.

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But TCJ is a 100 sec cooldown :( it feels monotonous to play as a Gust Slash spammer.

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Originally Posted by Siete

But TCJ is a 100 sec cooldown :( it feels monotonous to play as a Gust Slash spammer.

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Be glad they made it free, before it used to cost 80 ninki as well.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

Be glad they made it free, before it used to cost 80 ninki as well.

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Ohboy
But I really wonder, every other class I played felt different and brought new tools to the gameplay and the basic rotation. Except Ninja, Ninja is purely long cooldowns and then you're back to rogue for 20 seconds and you're a Ninja for 1 second every 20 seconds until you get the 60-100-120 cooldowns again.

There are some simple changes they could make to make the mudra/ninjutsu system less clunky, though some key ones would be making it so doing literally any action doesn't interrupt mudras anymore and allow you start a new mudra sequence if you get a bunny (IE, if you do Ten twice in a row, you'd get the bunny but doing a third Ten would override it and produce Fuma Shuriken instead).

The only thing that is NIN for the Job is Ninjutsu and the Ninki abilities. Everything else is actually kits from THF. Even our weapons and Weaponskill names are from THF. Even our Trick Attack (Actual name for this effect is Sneak Attack from previous games.) Also is a Thief ability.

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Originally Posted by Siete

Ohboy
But I really wonder, every other class I played felt different and brought new tools to the gameplay and the basic rotation. Except Ninja, Ninja is purely long cooldowns and then you're back to rogue for 20 seconds and you're a Ninja for 1 second every 20 seconds until you get the 60-100-120 cooldowns again.

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Youre only playing with a small toolkit of ninja currently at level 50, you have access to more ninja like abilities more frequently as you level up with more frequent ninjutsu uses now that kassatsu is only a 60s cooldown, with Bhavacakra coming up fairly frequently. Also Ninjutsu every 20s maximum isn't actually that bad when you compare to like dragoon which only jumps every 30

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Originally Posted by Siete

Ohboy
But I really wonder, every other class I played felt different and brought new tools to the gameplay and the basic rotation. Except Ninja, Ninja is purely long cooldowns and then you're back to rogue for 20 seconds and you're a Ninja for 1 second every 20 seconds until you get the 60-100-120 cooldowns again.

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You would be surprised. I'm not a Ninja main persay so I'm sorry if what I say verbally hurts Nin mains. But lets say you're doing a dungeon pull, you'll already have hyo set up, hide and refresh for ninjutsu, most likely use doton after. You still got two charges of Kassatu so you'll blow through both for two Goka, (which should realistically be like 3 seconds per jutsu).Then go into TCJ-Fuma-Ka-Sui, then you'd mesui to get back some ninki. , then you'll aoe combo into getting hellfrog or you may already have it by now.

During that time you'll get back your ninjutsu's pretty quick since the cooldown is generally around 2 seconds for each and TCJ/Kassatsu are gradually going down too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Youre only playing with a small toolkit of ninja currently at level 50, you have access to more ninja like abilities more frequently as you level up with more frequent ninjutsu uses now that kassatsu is only a 60s cooldown, with Bhavacakra coming up fairly frequently. Also Ninjutsu every 20s maximum isn't actually that bad when you compare to like dragoon which only jumps every 30

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But I've seen the rest of the toolkit, all long CDs.
DRG has Rip and Tear and Fang and Claw every 5 secs apart from the jumps, tho?

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Originally Posted by Siete

But I've seen the rest of the toolkit, all long CDs.
DRG has Rip and Tear and Fang and Claw every 5 secs apart from the jumps, tho?

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I dunno what you mean by rip and tear, but Fang and Claw and Wheeling thrust can only be done after 3 gcds, theyre just regular combo skills. Im just struggling to understand your argument when ninjas ninjustsu is very commonly used (every 20s, or less thanks to TCJ and Kassatsu) and as well as commonly used Bhava which is a ninja like move. All Jobs have long cooldowns on their shit, not just ninja

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Originally Posted by Siete

But I've seen the rest of the toolkit, all long CDs.
DRG has Rip and Tear and Fang and Claw every 5 secs apart from the jumps, tho?

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1st off: NIN's Extra Mudra abilities also act as Mudra resets, so you can skip the cooldown by using said skills, a feature I don't think much jobs have

2nd: DRG's Fang and Claw is a Combo ender that can only be used after your 3rd or 4th combo action. Also by that logic NIN's Armor Crush is a NIN action which means you'll be using a NIN action every few seconds

3rd: Seeing/knowing a toolkit and using the toolkit are two very different things

4th: DRG's Rip and Tear? isn't that GNB stuff

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Originally Posted by Rayo

1st off: NIN's Extra Mudra abilities also act as Mudra resets, so you can skip the cooldown by using said skills, a feature I don't think much jobs have

2nd: DRG's Fang and Claw is a Combo ender that can only be used after your 3rd or 4th combo action. Also by that logic NIN's Armor Crush is a NIN action which means you'll be using a NIN action every few seconds

3rd: Seeing/knowing a toolkit and using the toolkit are two very different things

4th: DRG's Rip and Tear? isn't that GNB stuff

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Got the name's wrong, influenced by one of Doom's best OST name.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

You would be surprised. I'm not a Ninja main persay so I'm sorry if what I say verbally hurts Nin mains. But lets say you're doing a dungeon pull, you'll already have hyo set up, hide and refresh for ninjutsu, most likely use doton after. You still got two charges of Kassatu so you'll blow through both for two Goka, (which should realistically be like 3 seconds per jutsu).Then go into TCJ-Fuma-Ka-Sui, then you'd mesui to get back some ninki. , then you'll aoe combo into getting hellfrog or you may already have it by now.

During that time you'll get back your ninjutsu's pretty quick since the cooldown is generally around 2 seconds for each and TCJ/Kassatsu are gradually going down too.

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Huton, run to dungeon pack, hopefully 20 seconds has passed. Use Doton while quickly using Hide to reset mudra. continue with Katon > Kassats > kassats > Ten-Chi-Jin. Thats.... 7 Ninjutsus back to back within a small amount of time. Very fun, big burst.

This applies to all jobs, but without being level 80, you just can't possibly understand the complexity of Ninja. You're just seeing small snapshots of abilities, but when you hit 80, you'll get a full kit to work with... until then, I'd advise to withhold judgement. If you still feel the same way after 80, then it's a discussion worth having.

Ninjutsus have a lot of problems with them, including but not limited to: Cooldown starts at the end, not the beginning when the first mudra is cast, they're easy to mess up, the timing can get wonky, cooldown-gated cooldown (Suiton->Trick Attack), lag intolerance, GCD clipping, and so forth. But the one thing most NIN will agree on is that they're fun despite their flaws and a core part of class identity.

I want to see Ninjutsu massively overhauled simply because of the lag intolerance aspect, but I still believe it's a core part of class identity that, no matter what is done, should be preserved as best as practical while still finding a way to deal with the lag issues.

And yeah, Ninja has a lot of issues right now, but the class is incredibly complex and frenetic. IIRC it's the busiest job in terms of raw button strokes, and is up there with the busiest if you're like me and treat an entire 4-button press for suiton as being 1 singular action instead of 4 separate actions (I know, I'm crazy). It has a lot to worry about and is going to get something somewhat major done to it to help with this aspect in 5.1 iirc.

Something else I think would make ninjutsu less clunky would be making the game "lock in" whatever jutsu you've used last so you can use it repeatedly without needing to redo the inputs.

This would mostly help with Raiton and Hyoton as those are the only ones we're generally going to be using multiple times in a row.

One thing I'd like to see with Ninjutsu is forcing all of them to have only one set of symbols, and then increasing the number of jutsus available for usage.

For example, if every jutsu had a unique pattern to it, we could go from 9 to 19 different jutsus. If you throw in duplicate symbols (for example, Ten-Ten-Chi), you can have up to 39 different ninjutsus to use. Should SE go that route, then we absolutely need a UI showing what we're building (as that information is critical for this kind of system), and they need to realign the jutsus so that the mudras form something akin to a language (first one indicates if it's a buff/debuff, single target attack, or ranged attack, etc).

The advantage of having that amount of complexity in the class is that it keeps the number of skills outside of the ninjutsu system rather small comparatively, but also lets SE really leverage the system to create a more high skill cap class which makes NIN more interesting as there needs to be at least one class where being skilled should make all the difference in the world.